Rebranding a practice focused on mindfulness and money, with Mary Beth Storjohann

Sometimes financial planning is about more than investing toward goals. For Lynne Knox, a private wealth manager at Capital Group Private Client Services, that often means helping people move from fragility to strength. This is particularly true for women age 65 and older going through “gray divorce” after spending decades in a traditional homemaker role.  

These women may have high net worth but little experience making their own financial decisions. They need guidance, but they also want allies they can trust and lean on during a time of great uncertainty. 

In this episode, Knox describes the financial advice she gives them, a technique for better client conversations, and how she nurtures these client relationships after the divorce is finalized. 

For more, visit PracticeLab.

To truly provide optimal service, Mary Beth Storjohann and her team at Abacus Wealth Partners aim to forge emotional connections with clients. “How do you speak to what’s on their hearts and minds?” she asks. “That’s how you get to know about where your clients spend their time and what they’re worried about.” 

This more-emotional-than-financial approach is not new for Abacus, which was founded nearly 30 years ago by Buddhists seeking to incorporate religious principles into financial services. But the appeal is stronger than ever. 

In this episode, Storjohann describes adapting client service to better connect with women and next-generation clients. She also shares how her firm seeks organic growth by expanding its network of entrepreneurial advisors to share skills and best practices for success. 

For more, visit PracticeLab.

Abacus Wealth Partners was founded by two Buddhists in 1996 with the idea to incorporate their religious principles into financial services. Last year, they stepped away from the daily management of the firm, passing the reins to two women co-CEOs.

The money-and-mindfulness ethos remains at the forefront of the firm’s mission and values, says Mary Beth Storjohann, one of those co-CEOs. Like many financial advisors, Abacus seeks to help clients connect money with their life goals. But the firm also aims to help clients experience what it calls a “sense of enough here and now, not just in the future.”

Abacus aims to show that a spiritual focus is not inconsistent with material success. The Southern California-based firm has about $3 billion in assets under management.

For more, visit PracticeLab.

Can digital marketing drive leads? Yes, says James Comblo of FSC Wealth Advisors in Fishkill, New York. A third-generation advisor with nearly $250 million in assets under management, Comblo is focused on providing holistic planning to clients he calls “blue-collar millionaires.” Finding and attracting these clients to the firm’s website, however, has been a process he’s spent nearly a decade building and refining. Today, his website and the content he creates help garner thousands of qualified leads.

In this episode, Comblo describes his trial-and-error process to digital marketing — from updating his website (which, he admits, he has done three times), to becoming a thought leader, to Facebook ad campaigns — and shares what he’s learned along the way. 

For more, visit PracticeLab.

Before advisor Ben Wong sold and consolidated his billion-dollar advisor business with Mariner Wealth Advisors in 2022, he did a lot of careful thinking about his exit strategy. His ensemble team had a big impact on his decision. He wasn’t merely selling a book of business, but an operation. He wanted a way for his team to benefit and continue to grow. And he wanted to make himself happy in the coming years.

In part two of our discussion, Ben describes his path to succession and why it works so well for his ensemble practice. You’ll also hear about how this self-described workflow nerd thinks about staffing and hiring, along with tips for how other advisors can future-proof their practices.

For more, visit PracticeLab.

What does it mean to future-proof your practice? For Ben Wong of Mariner Wealth Advisors in Pleasanton, California, it’s been an evolution in service, a team transformation and a succession plan that’s a win for everyone involved. After recently selling his billion-dollar advisory firm, Viewpoint Financial Network, to Mariner (a large national firm), he’s already seeing the benefits of scale.

Ben had much to say, so we broke the conversation into two parts. In part one, he describes how his team puts clients first with a unique level of service (or “over service”), simplifying the experience at every step. And he explains how a lack of client minimums helps his firm retain multiple generations of clients and attract more referrals.

For more, visit PracticeLab.

When it comes to estate planning, advisors naturally spend time helping clients think through their legacies and how they’d like to share their estates. But it’s the client’s executor (or trustee) who’s charged with making sure those wishes become reality. That’s why it makes sense to speak to clients about this role and share important considerations and guidance that can help clients make the best decision for the role. Too often, clients make this choice using a single variable: Whom do they trust?

Stacey Delich-Gould and Anne Gifford Ewing, trust and estate specialists at Capital Group’s Private Client Services, share insight on factors clients should consider when appointing an executor or trustee, and ideas on how advisors can help clients prepare their fiduciaries for the role.

For more, visit PracticeLab.

In just nine years, Jonathan Freeman and Brian McCarver built Stonebridge Financial Group in central Pennsylvania to $1.3 billion in assets — largely through their retirement plan business.

We split this interview into two parts. In the first episode the two described how team management is the bedrock of their business, how they’ve leveraged centers of influence (COIs) and why spending resources on marketing helps fuel organic growth.

Now let’s hear how they built a corporate retirement plan business, and how its helped expand the roster of the firm’s wealth management clients. They’ll also speak about why they created an advisory board, and how having one helped shape their practice. For more, visit PracticeLab.

From their footprint in the Deep South, Rhonda and Scott Ferguson have developed a strong niche by focusing on employees at regional outposts of some of the country’s biggest companies. Working out of a small home in downtown Columbus, Mississippi, the two serve as a bridge between those large corporations and their small-town workers.

In this episode, hear how the mother-and-son duo built Financial Concepts, with $775 million in assets under management, using their local roots and hometown authenticity to win clients planning for retirement from big-name organizations. The key, they say, is understanding the benefits packages of those companies better than anyone in town — including the companies themselves.

For more, visit PracticeLab.

Jonathan Freeman and Brian McCarver of Stonebridge Financial Group began their careers when cold-calling and a focus on commissions dominated financial services. When they first met 20 years ago, they agreed that the industry’s future lied instead in emphasizing teams and personalized client services — important common ground between two founders with otherwise opposite personalities. Founded in 2013, their firm now has 19 people in two offices in central Pennsylvania, managing $1.3 billion in assets.

In this epiode, they talk about why team management is the bedrock of their growth, how they’ve leveraged centers of influence (COIs) to create a robust client referral pipeline and why spending resources on marketing helps fuel organic and sustainable growth.

For more, visit PracticeLab.